the average person doesn’t think they are working class, they think that’s what poor people are.
my dad made a working class salary his entire life, but he always told us we were middle class and ‘better’ than those working-class idiot losers.
average people admire rich people and want to be them, and they hate working class people.
i’m a middle class person now, but i live around a lot of upper middle class people, and regularly they let me know I’m subhuman scum in their eyes. and working-class people i grew up with, think i’m a rich effete snob with my graduate degree and my expensive coffee and my compact car.
people generally are much more focused on the differences around them and feeling they are better than their neighbors is a far bigger concern than what rich people are doing. the person living across the street from you gets more upset about you getting a nicer car than them then they do about jeff bezo’s wedding.
“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” (paraphrased)
When my parents retired, after giving me a lifetime of bad advice on nearly everything, I found out that I earned more than double their combined salaries, even though my mom was a VP.
Her company figured out that they could buy her off with a title or an office, or more responsibility, with the promise that a raise was right around the corner, and she bought it every time. She was always telling me to stop worrying about the salary, and go after the promotions, and the salary would follow. That salary never arrived for her.
you’re doing the clouding propaganda to yourself even in your reply; there is no such thing as middle or upper middle or lower class, it’s only working and owning classes. (ignoring the folk who do not work for the purpose of this reply.)
many claim “yeah but middle class is a financial thing or quality of life thing” - cool. then don’t rank it with working class. because working class is about the relationship to capital. A millionaire and a thousandaire are still working class if they both sell their labor for the purpose of an owner’s profit ideals.
(just as an aside, this is why cops are not working class)
the average person doesn’t think they are working class, they think that’s what poor people are.
my dad made a working class salary his entire life, but he always told us we were middle class and ‘better’ than those working-class idiot losers.
average people admire rich people and want to be them, and they hate working class people.
i’m a middle class person now, but i live around a lot of upper middle class people, and regularly they let me know I’m subhuman scum in their eyes. and working-class people i grew up with, think i’m a rich effete snob with my graduate degree and my expensive coffee and my compact car.
people generally are much more focused on the differences around them and feeling they are better than their neighbors is a far bigger concern than what rich people are doing. the person living across the street from you gets more upset about you getting a nicer car than them then they do about jeff bezo’s wedding.
“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” (paraphrased)
When my parents retired, after giving me a lifetime of bad advice on nearly everything, I found out that I earned more than double their combined salaries, even though my mom was a VP.
Her company figured out that they could buy her off with a title or an office, or more responsibility, with the promise that a raise was right around the corner, and she bought it every time. She was always telling me to stop worrying about the salary, and go after the promotions, and the salary would follow. That salary never arrived for her.
you’re doing the clouding propaganda to yourself even in your reply; there is no such thing as middle or upper middle or lower class, it’s only working and owning classes. (ignoring the folk who do not work for the purpose of this reply.)
many claim “yeah but middle class is a financial thing or quality of life thing” - cool. then don’t rank it with working class. because working class is about the relationship to capital. A millionaire and a thousandaire are still working class if they both sell their labor for the purpose of an owner’s profit ideals.
(just as an aside, this is why cops are not working class)